CHAPTER ONE: WHAT IS MANAGEMENT?
A MANAGER’S JOB IS TO build a team that works well together, support members in reaching their career goals, and create processes to get work done smoothly and efficiently.
The One-Line Definition of a Manager’s Job
The crux of management: The belief that a team of people can achieve more than a single person going alone. It is the realization that you don’t have to do everything yourself, be the best at everything yourself, or even know how to do everything yourself. Your job, as a manager, is to get better outcomes from a group of people working together.
How Do You Tell a Great Manager from an Average Manager?
Andy Grove Evaluation: “the output of the work unit and not simply the activity involved.”
Alternatively, review the team’s results (present outcomes) and the other half was based on the strength and satisfaction of my team (future outcomes; did I do a good job hiring and developing individuals, and was my team happy and working well together)?
THE THREE THINGS MANAGERS THINK ABOUT ALL DAY (purpose, people, and process).
Purpose is the outcome your team is trying to accomplish, otherwise known as the why.
- Everyone on the team should have a similar picture of why does our work matters. If this purpose is missing or unclear, then you may experience conflicts or mismatched expectations.
- To ensure that your team knows what success looks like and cares about achieving it.
People – are the members of your team set up to succeed? Do they have the right skills? Are they motivated to do great work?
- If you don’t have the right people for the job, or you don’t have an environment where they can thrive, then you’re going to have problems.
- To manage people well, you must develop trusting relationships with them, understand their strengths and weaknesses (as well as your own), make good decisions about who should do what (including hiring and firing when necessary), and coach individuals to do their best.
Process – how your team works together.
- How everyone’s supposed to work together?
- What the team’s values are
- Who should do what by when?
- What principles should govern decision-making?
For managers, important processes to master include running effective meetings, future proof against past mistakes, planning for tomorrow, and nurturing a healthy culture.
Your role as a manager is not to do the work yourself, even if you are the best at it, because that will only take you so far. Your role is to improve the purpose, people, and process of your team to get as high a multiplier effect on your collective outcome as you can.
I learned then one of my first lessons of management — the best outcomes come from inspiring people to action, not telling them what to do.
The Difference Between Leadership and Management
Anyone can exhibit leadership, regardless of their role. Leadership is not something that can be bestowed. It must be earned. People must want to follow you.
CHAPTER TWO: YOUR FIRST THREE MONTHS
The Apprentice: Promoted to manage a team you were once part of
Work with your manager on a joint plan for getting started.
Questions to discuss include:
- What will be my scope to start, and how do you expect it to change over time?
- How will my transition be communicated?
- What do I need to know about the people that I’ll be managing?
- What important team goals or processes should I be aware of and help push forward?
- What does success look like in my first three and six months?
- How can the two of us stay aligned on who does what?
What to Watch Out For
- It can feel awkward to establish a new dynamic with former peers.
- Playing the role of coach: Your job now includes understanding your former peers’ career goals, what kinds of projects are well suited to their strengths and interests, what they need help with, and how they are doing relative to expectations.
- Having hard conversations: The manager – report relationship is different than the peer relationship. You are now responsible for the outcome of your team, including all the decisions that are made within it. If something is getting in the way of great work happening, you need to address it swiftly and directly.
- Having people treat you differently or share less information with you
- At the point in which your team becomes four or five people, you should have a plan for how to scale back your individual contributor responsibilities so that you can be the best manager for your people.
The Pioneer: You were among the first to take on a challenge that is now turning into a bigger team effort.
In the early days, make sure that you’re spending time calibrating with your new team what your group’s goals, values, and processes ought to be.
Some questions to ask yourself in preparation:
- How do I make decisions?
- What do I consider a job well done?
- What are all the responsibilities I took care of when it was just me?
- What’s easy or hard about working in this function?
- What new processes are needed now that this team is growing?
How to hire the right team:
- What qualities do I want in a team member?
- What skills does our team need to complement my own?
- How should this team look and function in a year?
- How will my own role and responsibilities evolve?
The New Boss: You’re brought in to manage an existing team that you’re unfamiliar with
What to Take Advantage of:
- People cut you slack in the beginning. The biggest advantage of being new is that you have a window of time, usually about three months, when everyone recognizes that you’re the new kid on the block.
- Use the newbie card to your advantage by asking as many questions of as many people as you can.
- You start with a blank slate. You have a chance to form new ties and reset your identity.
In your first few one-on-one meetings, ask your reports the following questions to understand what their “dream manager” looks like.
- What did you and your past manager discuss that was most helpful to you?
- What are the ways in which you’d like to be supported?
- How do you like to be recognized for great work?
- What kind of feedback is most useful for you?
- Imagine that you and I had an amazing relationship. What would that look like?
What to Watch Out for
- It takes a while to adjust to the norms of a new environment.
- One of the biggest mistakes new bosses make is thinking they need to jump in and exert their opinions right away to show that they are capable.
In your first few months, your primary job is to listen, ask questions, and learn. New managers on my team tell me that the thing they most want to understand is how to calibrate their expectations around “what’s normal.” One effective way to do that is to look at specific scenarios together with your own manager.
Questions to ask include:
- What does it mean to do a great job versus an average or poor job? Can you give me some examples?
- Can you share your impressions of how you think Project X or Meeting Y went? Why do you think that?
- I noticed that Z happened the other day . . .. Is that normal or should I be concerned?
- What keeps you up at night? Why?
- How do you determine which things to prioritize?
You need to invest in building new relationships.
- “Since I’m new, you might not feel comfortable sharing everything with me right away. I hope to earn your trust over time. I’ll start by sharing more about myself, including my biggest failure ever.
THE SUCCESSOR: Similar to the apprentice, but with a twist: because your manager is leaving, you’re taking on supporting the entire team yourself, not just a portion of it.
What to Watch Out for
- It can feel awkward to establish a new dynamic with former peers.
- The increase in responsibility can feel overwhelming.
- “Our last manager left big shoes to fill, and while I’ll do my best, I expect I’ll go through a few bumps along the way. I want to ask you for your help and support during this period.”
- You feel pressure to do things exactly like your former manager.
CHAPTER THREE: LEADING A SMALL TEAM
Andy Grove asks: What gets in the way of good work? There are only two possibilities.
- The first is that people don’t know how to do good work.
- The second is that they know how, but they aren’t motivated.
Is it a matter of motivation or skill?
- First, discuss whether your expectations are aligned — does “great work” mean the same thing for both of you?
- Then discuss whether it’s a matter of motivation.
- If neither of those don’t resolve your concerns, then dive into whether the issue is with skills.
Trust Is the Most Important Ingredient
You can avoid being blindsided by developing a relationship founded on trust, in which your reporters feel that they can be completely honest with you because they have no doubt that you truly care about them.
You’ve accomplished this if the following three statements are true:
- My reports regularly bring their biggest challenges to my attention. A hallmark of a trusting relationship is that people feel they can share their mistakes, challenges, and fears with you.
- My report and I regularly give each other critical feedback and it isn’t taken personally.
- My reports would gladly work for me again. One of the truest indicators of the strength of your relationships is whether your reports would want you as their manager in the future if they were given the choice.
You can also get an approximate reading by asking your report, “What are the qualities of a perfect manager for you?” and evaluating how you compare to the description you get back.
STRIVE TO BE HUMAN, NOT A BOSS
Earn trust with your reports through:
Respect and Care about Your Report: If you don’t truly respect or care about your report, there is no faking it. Trust me, they know.
Invest Time to Help Your Report: I recommend no less than a weekly 1: 1 with every report for thirty minutes, and more time if needed. One-on-ones should be focused on your report and what would help him be more successful, not on you and what you need. If you can remove a barrier, provide a valuable new perspective, or increase their confidence, then you’re enabling them to be more successful.
How can you achieve stellar 1: 1s?
- Discuss top priorities: What are the one, two, or three most critical outcomes for your report and how can you help her tackle these challenges?
- Calibrate what “great” looks like: Do you have a shared vision of what you’re working toward? Are you in sync with goals or expectations?
- Share feedback: What feedback can you give that will help your report, and what can your report tell you that will make you more effective as a manager?
- Reflect on how things are going: How is he feeling on the whole? What’s making him satisfied or dissatisfied? Have any of his goals changed? What has he learned recently and what does he want to learn going forward?
Every morning, I’ve gotten into the habit of scanning my calendar and compiling a list of questions for each person I’m meeting with. Here are some of my favorite questions to get the conversation moving:
- Identify: These questions focus on what really matters for your report and what topics are worth spending more time on.
- What’s top of mind for you right now?
- What priorities are you thinking about this week?
- What’s the best use of our time today?
- Understand: Once you’ve identified a topic to discuss, these next questions get to the root of the problem and what can be done about it.
- What does your ideal outcome look like?
- What’s hard for you in getting to that outcome?
- What do you really care about?
- What do you think is the best course of action?
- What’s the worst – case scenario you’re worried about?
- Support: These questions zero in on how you can be of greatest service to your report.
- How can I help you?
- What can I do to make you more successful?
- What was the most useful part of our conversation today?
Be Honest and Transparent about Your Report’s Performance
Your report should have a clear sense at all times of what your expectations are and where he stands.
HELP PEOPLE PLAY TO THEIR STRENGTHS
Don’t let the worst performers dominate your time — try to diagnose, address, and resolve their issues as swiftly as you can.
Good CEOs know that they should double down on the projects that are working and put more people, resources, and attention on those rather than get every single project to the point of “not failing.”
Make People Moves Quickly If They’re Underperforming
Help someone find a new role in your organization or let him or her go.
The first option should always be considered because if there is a better role out there that’s more aligned with your report’s interests and skills, then that’s a great outcome for both the person and your company.
- Avoid shuffling around people who lack the right skills or who exhibit toxic behavior.
- Just because your report didn’t work out on your team doesn’t mean it’s on him – “Perhaps it’s you who shouldn’t be his manager, not the other way around.”
CHAPTER FOUR: THE ART OF FEEDBACK
For a leader, giving feedback — both when things are going well and when they aren’t — is one of the most fundamental aspects of the job. The two of the biggest barriers preventing your reports from doing great work — unclear expectations and inadequate skills.
WHAT DOES GREAT FEEDBACK LOOK LIKE?
Feedback doesn’t have to be critical. Praise is often more motivating than criticism. And for another, you don’t always have to start with a problem.
Below, you’ll find the four most common ways to inspire a change in behavior:
- Set Clear Expectations at the Beginning
Make sure you address the following:
- What a great job looks like for your report, compared to a mediocre or bad job
- What advice you have to help your report get started on the right foot
- Give Task-Specific Feedback as Frequently as You Can
You provide this kind of feedback about something that someone did after the fact.
- For example, after your report presents an analysis, tell her what you thought she did well and what could do better in the future. Be as precise and as detailed as you can.
Task-specific feedback is most effective when the action performed is still fresh in your report’s memory, so share it as soon as you can.
- Share Behavioral Feedback Thoughtfully and Regularly
When you zoom out and look at many examples of tasks-specific feedback for a report, what themes emerge? Does he make decisions quickly or slowly? Is he a process wizard or an unconventional thinker? Does he gravitate toward pragmatic or idealistic solutions?
Asking this question about themes helps you reflect on your report’s unique strengths or areas of development as shown in his patterns of behavior.
When you give behavioral feedback, you are making a statement about how you perceive that person, so your words need to be thoughtfully considered and supported with specific examples to explain why you feel that way.
- Collect 360-Degree Feedback for Maximum Objectivity
Every quarter, for each report, I send a short email to a handful of his or her closest collaborators asking: a) What is X doing especially well that X should do more of? and b) What should X change or stop doing?
EVERY MAJOR DISAPPOINTMENT IS A FAILURE TO SET EXPECTATIONS
“If the first time a direct report hears that he’s not meeting expectations is during his performance review, it’s going to feel terrible.”
Whenever you find yourself deeply disappointed, or disappointing someone else, ask yourself: Where did I miss out on setting clear expectations, and how might I do better in the future?
YOUR FEEDBACK ONLY COUNTS IF IT MAKES THINGS BETTER
The key question that should always be in the back of your mind is: Does my feedback lead to the change I’m hoping for? To help answer this question, ask yourself:
Am I Giving Feedback Often Enough? The most common response to the question “How could your manager better support you?” is simply “Give me more feedback.”
Is My Feedback Being Heard? What you intend to say and what the listener hears are not always the same. You might think you’re being clear when in fact you’re saying too much, or too little, or sending a different message through your body language.
- The best way to make your feedback heard is to make the listener feel safe, and to show that you’re saying it because you care about her and want her to succeed. This is why positive feedback is so effective.
- When you do have critical feedback to share, approach it with a sense of curiosity and an honest desire to understand your report’s perspective. One simple way to do this is to state your point directly and then follow up with, “Does this feedback resonate with you? Why or why not?”
- At the end of a conversation, when you’re not sure whether you’ve been heard, there are a few things you can do. The first is a verbal confirmation: “Okay, let’s make sure we’re on the same page — what are your takeaways and next steps?” The second is to summarize via email what was discussed. Writing can clarify the points being made as well as be reread and referenced in the future. The third tactic is to help the person hear the same message many times and from many sources.
Does your Feedback Lead to Positive Action?
1. Make your feedback as specific as possible. Use clear examples that get at the why so it’s easier for the recipient to know what you mean.
2. Clarify what success looks and feels like.
3. Suggest next steps. Be clear about whether you’re setting an expectation or merely offering a suggestion. A softer approach is to ask your report, “So what do you think the next steps should be?” and let them guide the discussion. Can you do another pass on this report with the changes we discussed today, and I’ll set up the next review for Thursday?
DELIVERING CRITICAL FEEDBACK OR BAD NEWS
The best way to give critical feedback is to deliver it directly and dispassionately.
Plainly say what you perceive the issue to be, what made you feel that way, and how you’d like to work together to resolve the concern.
Template: When I [ heard / observed / reflected on] your [ action / behavior / output], I felt concerned because . . . I’d like to understand your perspective and talk about how we can resolve this.
CHAPTER FIVE: MANAGING YOURSELF
If you don’t have a good handle on yourself, you won’t have a good handle on how to best support your team. You first need to get deep with knowing you — your strengths, your values, your comfort zones, your blind spots, and your biases.
Get to Brutal Honesty with Yourself
For self-awareness: use StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath or StandOut by Marcus Buckingham.
If you want to do a quick version, jot down the first thing that comes to mind when you ask yourself the following questions:
- How would the people who know and like me best (family, significant other, close friends) describe me in three words?
- What three qualities do I possess that I am the proudest of?
- When I look back on something I did that was successful, what personal traits do I give credit to?
- What are the top three most common pieces of positive feedback that I’ve received from my manager or peers?
- Whenever my worst inner critic sits on my shoulder, what does she yell at me for?
- If a magical fairy were to come and bestow on me three gifts I don’t yet have, what would they be?
- What are three things that trigger me? (A trigger is a situation that gets me more worked up than it should.)
- What are the top three most common pieces of feedback from my manager or peers on how I could be more effective?
Ask others for feedback:
Ask your manager to help you calibrate yourself through the following two questions:
- What opportunities do you see for me to do more of what I do well? What do you think are the biggest things holding me back from having greater impact?
- What skills do you think a hypothetical perfect person in my role would have? For each skill, how would you rate me against that ideal on a scale of one to five?
Pick three to seven people whom you work closely with and ask if they’d be willing to share some feedback to help you improve.
Examples of specific asks:
- On our last project together, in what ways did you see me having an impact? What do you think I could have done to have more impact?
- With my team, what am I doing well that you’d like to see me do more of? What should I stop doing?
- One of the things I’m working on is being more decisive. How do you think I’m doing on that? Any suggestions on how I can do better here?
Ask for task-specific feedback to calibrate yourself on specific skills
- “I’m hoping to improve my speaking skills. What do you think went well with my presentation?”
- “I’m working on making sure my point is clear in the first three minutes. Did that come across? How can I make it clearer next time?”
LEARNING TO BE TWICE AS GOOD
Set a lofty goal for yourself: How can I be twice as good? Then maximize your learning through the following.
Treat Your Manager as a Coach
- Engage your manager for feedback. Ask, “What skills do you think I should work on in order to have more impact?” Share your personal goals and enlist his help: “I want to learn to become a better presenter, so I’d be grateful if you kept an eye out for opportunities where I can get in front of others.”
- Use 1: 1s with my manager as an opportunity for focused learning (e.g. “How do you decide which meetings to attend?” or “How do you approach selling a candidate?”)
Make a Mentor Out of Everyone
- In particular, people in your peer group — those with a similar job to yours — can be an excellent source of support and advice.
- Whatever the skill, don’t be afraid to ask, “Hey, I’m really impressed with the way you [ do X]. I’d love to learn from you. Would you be willing to grab a coffee with me and share your approach?”
Set Aside Time to Reflect and Set Goals
- Personally, I like to schedule an hour on my calendar at the end of every week to think about what I accomplished, what I’m satisfied or dissatisfied with, and what I’m taking away for next week. I then jot down some notes in an email to my team, as an easy way to keep up the habit.
- I also set personal goals and do bigger look-backs every six months, which gives me a longer time frame to tackle ambitious projects and learn new skills.
- At the end of every six months, I’ll pull up my goals and evaluate how I did. The important thing isn’t the grade but what I learned.
CHAPTER SIX: AMAZING MEETINGS
Good meetings are simple and straightforward. You leave them feeling the same way every time:
- The meeting was a great use of my time.
- I learned something new that will help me be more effective at my job.
- I left with a clearer sense of what I should do next.
- Everyone was engaged.
- I felt welcome.
WHAT IS A GREAT OUTCOME FOR YOUR MEETING?
You may hear the conventional wisdom that “all meetings should have a purpose.” That’s good advice, but it doesn’t go far enough. You need to ask: “what does a great outcome look like?” Being crystal clear about the outcome you’re shooting for is the first step to running great meetings.
Meeting Type: Making a Decision
In a decision meeting, you’re framing the different options on the table and asking a decision-maker to make a call.
Success here is both getting to a clear decision and everyone leaving with a sense of trust in the process. You don’t need consensus, but those whom the decision affects should feel that the way it was made was efficient and fair.
A great decision-making meeting does the following:
- Gets a decision made (obviously)
- Includes the people most directly affected by the decision as well as a clearly designated decision-maker
- Presents all credible options objectively and with relevant background information, and includes the team’s recommendation if there is one
- Gives equal airtime to dissenting opinions and makes people feel that they were heard
Bad outcomes to avoid:
- People feel that their side wasn’t presented well, so they don’t trust the resulting decision.
- Decisions take a long time to make, which delays progress. While important and hard-to-reverse decisions deserve deep consideration, be wary of spending too much time on small, easy-to-reverse decisions.
- Decisions keep flip-flopping back and forth, which makes it hard to trust and act on them.
- Too much time is spent trying to get a group to a consensus rather than escalating quickly to a decision-maker.
- Time is wasted on rehashing the same argument twenty different ways.
Meeting Type: Sharing Information
Done well, it allows for more interactivity – groups can ask questions or express their reactions.
A great informational meeting accomplishes the following:
- Enables the group to feel like they learned something valuable
- Conveys key messages clearly and memorably
- Keeps the audience’s attention (through dynamic speakers, rich storytelling, skilled pacing, interactivity)
- Evokes an intended emotion — whether inspiration, trust, pride, courage, empathy, etc.
Meeting Type: Providing Feedback
Often known as a “review,” the purpose of a feedback meeting is for stakeholders to understand and give input on work in progress.
A great feedback meeting achieves the following:
- Gets everyone on the same page about what success for the project looks like
- Honestly represents the current status of the work, including an assessment of how things are going, any changes since the last check-in, and what the future plans are
- Clearly frames open questions, key decisions, or known concerns to get the most helpful feedback
- Ends with agreed-upon next steps (including when the next milestone or check-in will be)
Meeting Type: Generating Ideas
The best idea generation comes from understanding that we need both time to think alone (because our brains are most creative when we’re by ourselves) and time to engage with others (because hearing different perspectives creates sparks that lead to even better ideas).
Preparation and good facilitation is key. A great generative meeting does the following:
- Produces many diverse, nonobvious solutions through ensuring each participant has quiet alone time to think of ideas and write them down (either before or during the meeting)
- Considers the totality of ideas from everyone, not just the loudest voices
- Helps ideas evolve and build off each other through meaningful discussion
- Ends with clear next steps for how to turn ideas into action
Meeting Type: Strengthening Relationships
A great team bonding meeting enables the following:
- Creates better understanding and trust between participants
- Encourages people to be open and authentic
- Makes people feel cared for
Give People a Chance to Come Prepared
- Organizers to send out any presentations or documents the day before so that everyone got the chance to process the information in advance.
- Sending out an agenda ahead of time shows a level of care and intentionality in helping the group stay focused. It’s a good idea to do this for meetings of any size, even 1: 1s, but the larger the meeting, the more important the preparation.
- In the last few minutes of a meeting, get into the habit of asking, “So before we break, let’s make sure we agree on next steps . . .” After the meeting, send out a recap to the attendees with a summary of the discussion, a list of specific action items and who is responsible for each, and when the next check – in will be.
MAKE IT SAFE FOR PEOPLE TO CONTRIBUTE
Be Explicit about the Norms You Want to Set
- If you want everyone to participate in your meeting, sometimes the easiest tactic is just to say that directly.
Manage Equal Airtime
- Be on the lookout for interruptions. If someone starts making a point but another loud voice cuts her off, provide cover by saying, “Hang on, Ann wasn’t finished.” As an added bonus, I’ve found that doing this also bolsters your own credibility.
- Reading the room: Particularly perceptive managers might even try directed questions: “Susan, you look puzzled — what do you think we should do?” or “Rick, we haven’t heard from you yet. What’s your opinion?”
- For the overtalkers , be clear but polite in letting them know that it’s time for someone else to get a turn: “Ian, it’s clear you have more you want to say, but let’s first make sure other people get a chance to weigh in ” or “ Laura, I’m hearing that you feel very strongly we should do X — before we wrap , does anyone have another opinion? I want to make sure all points of view are heard.”
CHAPTER SEVEN: HIRING WELL
DESIGN YOUR TEAM INTENTIONALLY
One exercise I do every January is to map out where I hope my team will be by the end of the year. I create a future org chart, analyze gaps in skills, strengths, or experiences, and make a list of open roles to hire for. You can do something similar by asking yourself the following questions:
- How many new people will I add to our team this year (based on company growth, expected attrition, budget, priorities, etc.)?
- For each new hire, what level of experience am I looking for?
- Which specific skills or strengths do we need in our team (for example, creative thinking, operational excellence, expertise in XYZ, etc.)?
- Which skills and strengths does our team already have that new hires can stand to be weaker in?
HIRING IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY
Describe Your Ideal Candidate as Precisely as You Can
- It’s the hiring manager’s job to identify when a role is open and what kinds of people would be the best fit. Write the job description
Develop a Sourcing Strategy
- Once you have a good sense of the kind of person you want, it’s helpful to sit down with the recruiter and brainstorm where to look for your ideal candidate.
Deliver an Amazing Interview Experience
- A great interview process gives the candidate confidence in our company and the team they would be working with.
Show Candidates How Much You Want Them
- After I deliver an offer, I try to check in with the candidate every other day to let her know that I am thinking about her and that I’m excited to welcome her to my team.
- The more senior the candidate, the more critical your involvement is in the close because that person likely has many options, and you are looking for her to play a leadership role within your team.
HIRING IS A GAMBLE, BUT MAKE SMART BETS
Examine Past Examples of Similar Work – The best predictor for how someone will do in the future is to understand how they’ve done in the past on similar projects in similar environments.
Seek Out Trusted Recommendations – Trust the feedback. However, when evaluating references, keep in mind people typically improve their skills over time, so discount negative feedback that isn’t recent.
Reject Weak Hires – nothing “wow” about them and none of the interviewers felt strongly enough to fight for the hire if the decision came down to no.
Prepare Your Interview Questions Ahead of Time (Top Questions)
- What kinds of challenges are interesting to you and why? Can you describe a favorite project?
- What do you consider your greatest strengths? What would your peers agree are your areas of growth?
- Imagine yourself in three years. What do you hope will be different about you then compared to now?
- What was the hardest conflict you’ve had in the past year? How did it end, and what did you learn from the experience?
- What’s something that’s inspired you in your work recently?
Reject Anyone Who Exhibits Toxic Behavior – Be on the lookout for warning signs in interviews: bad-mouthing past employers (“My last manager was terrible”); blaming failures they were associated with on others (“The reason my last project didn’t succeed was because of internal politics”), etc.
Hire People Who Are Capable of More – Hiring someone who seems to offer more than what the role needs right now means they can help you tackle bigger problems in the future.
CHAPTER 8: MAKING THINGS HAPPEN
START WITH A CONCRETE VISION – Questions to Get Started
- Assume you have a magic wand that makes everything your team does go perfectly. What do you hope will be different in two to three years compared to now?
- How would you want someone who works on an adjacent team to describe what your team does? What do you hope will be your team’s reputation in a few years? How far off is that from where things are today?
- What unique superpower(s) does your team have? When you’re at your best, how are you creating value? What would it look like for your team to be twice as good? Five times as good?
- If you had to create a quick litmus test that anyone could use to assess whether your team was doing a poor job, a mediocre job, or a kick-ass job, what would that litmus test be?
A good strategy understands the crux of the problem it’s trying to solve. It focuses a team’s unique strengths, resources, and energy on what matters the most in achieving its goals.
Focus on Doing a Few Things Well – “If I could only achieve one goal, which would it be?”
Define Who Is Responsible for What – When ownership isn’t clear, things slip through the cracks.
Break Down a Big Goal into Smaller Pieces
From your target date, work backward and figure out who needs to do what every week. Ask people to set and publicly commit to their weekly goals—this creates accountability.
Order tasks by what matters most—which ones are “critical path” and which are “nice to have”? Always tackle “critical path” first.
PERFECT EXECUTION OVER PERFECT STRATEGY
Executing well means that you pick a reasonable direction, move quickly to learn what works and what doesn’t, and make adjustments to get to your desired outcome.
Here are some ways to tell if your team is executing well:
- Lists of projects or tasks are prioritized from most to least important, with the higher-up items receiving more time and attention.
- There is an efficient process for decision-making that everyone understands and trusts.
- The team moves quickly, especially with reversible decisions.
- After a decision is made, everyone commits (even those who disagree) and moves speedily to make it happen. Without new information, there is no second-guessing the decision, no pocket vetoing, and no foot dragging.
- When important new information surfaces, there is an expedient process to examine if and how current plans should change as a result.
- Every task has a who and a by when. Owners set and reliably deliver on commitments.
- The team is resilient and constantly seeking to learn. Every failure makes the team stronger because they don’t make the same mistake twice.
Define a Long-Term Vision and Work Backward
- What problems are you hoping to solve with what you’re doing?
- How do you imagine people will get value out of your work?
- Based on that, what are the most important priorities for the team now?
GOOD PROCESS IS EVER EVOLVING
Debriefs – One of the most useful tools for improving process is the practice of doing debriefs (also called retrospectives or postmortems). You can do this at the completion of a project, on a periodic basis, or anytime an unexpected event or error occurs.
- Here’s how it works: You invite the team to come together for an hour or two to reflect on what happened.
- Ask: What went well, what didn’t go well, and what would the team do differently next time?
- You must create a safe environment to have open and honest discussions. Present the facts as objectively as possible.
As a manager, part of your job will be the cultivation of such playbooks: how to run a team meeting, how to close a new hire, how to complete a project on time and on budget. If you find yourself doing a similar thing over and over again, chances are good that it can be codified into an instruction manual or checklist that can make the task go smoother in the future. Another bonus of doing this: you can then pass the playbook to others to learn and execute.
CHAPTER 9: LEADING A GROWING TEAM
BIG TEAMS VERSUS SMALL TEAMS
When you’re in leadership positions, they’re less likely to tell you the ugly truth. Here are ways to make it easier for people to tell you the truth.
- Emphasize that you welcome dissenting opinions and reward those who express them.
- Own your mistakes and remind your team that you are human, just like everyone else.
- Use language that invites discussion: “I may be totally wrong here, so tell me if you disagree. My opinion is . . .”
- You can also ask directly for advice: “If you were me, what would you do in this situation?”
GIVING PEOPLE BIG PROBLEMS IS A SIGN OF TRUST
The best work comes from those who have the time to live and breathe a problem fully, who can dedicate themselves to finding the best solution.
Give space for your employee to lead. Tell everyone else that she should now be considered the owner of the problem. Doing so creates accountability, but more important, the public declaration empowers the delegate.
TWO HEADS, ONE SHARED VISION
To create a shared vision of what’s important, ask yourself two things.
- What are the biggest priorities right now for our team? Then, talk about those with your reports and discuss how they might play a role.
- Are we aligned in how we think about people, purpose, and process?
- People: Do we feel like we have the right people on the right problems?”
- Purpose: Are you and your report aligned on why you’re doing what you’re doing and what success looks like?
- Process: Are your reports establishing healthy processes for their teams?
WHAT TO DO WHEN A MANAGER STRUGGLES
Ask yourself: “Assume the role was open. Would you rather rehire your current leader or take a gamble on someone else?” If the answer is no, make the move.
AIM TO PUT YOURSELF OUT OF A JOB
Rule of thumb: “Try to double your leadership capacity every year.” How? Through delegation.
The rule of thumb for delegation goes like this: spend your time and energy on the intersection of 1) what’s most important to the organization and 2) what you’re uniquely able to do better than anyone else.
From this, you can extrapolate that anything your report can do just as well or better than you, you should delegate.
CHAPTER TEN – NURTURING CULTURE
An organization’s culture is best understood not from reading what’s written on its corporate website but from seeing what it’s willing to give up for its values.
Culture describes the norms and values that govern how things get done.
KNOW THE KIND OF TEAM YOU WANT TO BE A PART OF
UNDERSTANDING YOUR CURRENT TEAM
- What are the first three adjectives that come to mind when describing the personality of your team?
- What moments made you feel most proud to be a part of your team? Why?
- What does your team do better than the majority of other teams out there?
- If you picked five random members of your team and individually asked each person, “What does our team value?” what would you hear?
- How similar is your team’s culture to the broader organization’s culture?
- Imagine a journalist scrutinizing your team. What would she say your team does well or not well?
- When people complain about how things work, what are the top three things that they bring up?
UNDERSTANDING YOUR ASPIRATIONS
- Describe the top five adjectives you’d want an external observer to use to describe your team’s culture. Why those?
- Now imagine those five adjectives sitting on a double-edged sword. What do you imagine are the pitfalls that come from ruthless adherence to those qualities? Are those acceptable to you?
- Make a list of the aspects of culture that you admire about other teams or organizations. Why do you admire them? What downsides does that team tolerate as a result?
- Make a list of the aspects of culture that you wouldn’t want to emulate from other teams or companies. Why not?
UNDERSTANDING THE DIFFERENCE
- On a scale from one to nine, with nine being “we’re 100 percent there” and one being “this is the opposite of our team,” how close is your current team from your aspirations?
- What shows up as both a strength of your team as well as a quality you value highly?
- Where are the biggest gaps between your current team culture and your aspirations?
- What are the obstacles that might get in the way of reaching your aspirations? How will you address them?
- Imagine how you want your team to work in a year’s time. How would you describe to a report what you hope will be different then compared to now?
NEVER STOP TALKING ABOUT WHAT’S IMPORTANT
When you value something deeply, don’t shy away from talking about it. Instead, embrace telling people why it’s important to you. Assume that for the message to stick, it should be heard ten different times and said in ten different ways. The more you can enlist others to help spread your message, the more likely it is to have an impact.
These days, I think a lot about how to communicate what I care about. I try different approaches—1:1 conversations about what’s on my mind, emails to my managers about my reflections for the week, notes to my entire staff on our top priorities, and in-person Q&A sessions focused on how we work.
ALWAYS WALK THE WALK
Our radars are fine-tuned to spot instances where someone in a position of authority says one thing and does another. This is one of the fastest ways to lose trust.
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